


Sounds in My Head (Used to Sing About the Birds and the Bees)

by androgenius, sevenminutes



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Abortion, Cheating, F/M, Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-12 20:19:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/androgenius/pseuds/androgenius, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenminutes/pseuds/sevenminutes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even a mere omission of the truth is still a lie. Maggie falls from grace, and the others follow closely behind her; in the end, everything comes together as it was always meant to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sounds in My Head (Used to Sing About the Birds and the Bees)

Ever since her panic attack, Maggie has done her very damnedest not to run out of the conference room again like she was bitten by a tailfly. On the one hand, it's a matter of pride-- not wanting her fellow coworkers to see her stumbling and rushing out the door for some likely vastly unprofessional reason that they can theorize about in their downtime.

On the other, the last person she wants rescuing her is Jim.

Not only does she not need it, it's a waste of both of their times, and making Jim worry about her is not exactly ideal when it drives her to think that he's worrying about her for reasons that aren't entirely professional, either. After all, if Mac storms out for some unknown reason, he doesn't immediately run after _her_ to make sure that _she's_ okay, and they were embedded together for twenty-six months.

Perhaps the most infuriating part of it all is that Don doesn't ever run after her and play white knight like Jim does, and he's her boyfriend. He's the one that's _supposed_ to.

So she carries her xanax with her at all times now, always at hand and ready whenever panic might strike.

Today, it's not panic.

The nausea starts suddenly and without warning, her eyes going wide as she holds up a single digit during one of Neal's tangents before stumbling out of her seat and out the door to run to the nearest bathroom.

Even mentally going through all the food she had in the last twenty-four hours isn't an answer to this particular riddle, none of it seeming to exacerbate her condition or give any indication as to having given her food poisoning in some way.

Other than throwing up the entire contents of her stomach, she feels just fine.

 

&

 

No one even seems to notice when Maggie rushes out of the room with a panicked expression on her face. Mac pauses just momentarily to glance after her before continuing what she was saying before, some story about the economy that he would normally be paying complete attention to. Instead, he’s watching Maggie race to the-- _men’s_ restroom?

He slips out of his seat without another word, not wanting to disturb the meeting or attract unnecessary attention to Maggie. He can’t think of what would possibly make her this shaken, and he knocks softly as he enters the room, bending down to look under the stalls for her heels.

She’s kneeling in the first stall, the door wide open, vomiting.

Cringing, he leans against the bank of stalls, not looking at her. He knows she’s probably embarrassed, and he doesn’t want to make that any worse.

“Maggie? Are you...okay?”

The flushing noise inside the stall seems to follow immediately after his words, and Maggie winces as she slowly stands, rights her skirt, and takes a deep breath.

"May I ask what, exactly, you're doing in here? And-- I'm fine, by the way, you don't have to ask me."

“Uh...” Jim trails off, looking down at the floor as he makes a blind grab for a paper towel to hand to her. “Well...I do have to ask, because you were just throwing up and that’s not generally a sign of someone being okay.”

He clears his throat, looking up at her with a soft, concerned frown.

“Also this is the men’s restroom. I’m allowed to be in here.”

"... oh."

Well, just as long as they're clear on that. Maggie feels her cheeks go rosy as she slowly nods, pressing her lips together into a thin line.

"W-well, that's just like you, to be in... you know what, nevermind, I don't know... where I was going with that." Shaking her head, she runs a hand over her face as she grabs for the paper towel to start wiping her mouth with. "So... what you're saying is that you _didn't_ follow me in here."

He’s still watching her, possibly even more concerned now, but unobtrusively, putting his hands in his pockets as he shrugs his shoulders.

“No, I did. You ran out...and I followed you. But I probably wouldn’t have followed you all the way in if you’d gone into the women’s,” he explains, looking up all the way to meet her eyes.

"Yes, well, anyone could have made that mistake." She shakes her head, brushing past him to get to the sink to wash her hands, wishing she could rinse her mouth out. "I'm _fine_."

Jim looks around at the urinals in the wall, slowly shaking his head as he comes over to the sink next to her.

“I’m not sure anyone could have, no.” He’s quiet for a long moment, watching her in the mirror as he reaches into his pocket for a piece of gum. “But I’m also not sure that you’re fine.”

"I'm not sick, I don't have food poisoning, I didn't eat anything bad, expired, or questionable, and the last time I checked, you weren't my mother." Sighing harshly, she grabs for the paper towels to wipe her hands dry, turning to look at him. "I _just_ threw up. I'm _fine_."

“People don’t _just_ throw up. You get that, right? There’s usually a cause.” He steps back, narrowing his eyes a little bit as he looks her over. “Have you been feeling sick? Dizzy? Feverish?”

" _Of course_ I get that," she snaps at him, chucking the paper towel at the waste bin and promptly missing it. Picking it up off the floor and hurtling it at the bin a second time with a huff, she throws him a glare. "I'm _fine_ and I don't need you _white knighting_ for me all the time! I'm a grown woman and I can take care of myself!"

Jim raises his hands in surrender, staying silent for a long moment, his eyebrows arching as he watches her huff and puff and work herself up into a fit. She almost looks like she’s going to be sick again.

“You didn’t actually tell me whether you’ve been feeling sick, dizzy, or feverish...”

"Not sick, just nauseous, not dizzy, and--" reaching forward to grab his hand, she slaps it onto her forehead. "Not feverish."

Holding her hands up demonstratively, she gives him a nod. "Happy now?"

Jim sighs, closely examining her face with his hand on her forehead.

“Do you know why you’re nauseous, Maggie?” he asks softly, his forehead crinkled with concern. “I would think you would want to know. You know, in case you’re sick.”

"It's probably nothing," she rolls her eyes at him, wondering when she asked him to play doctor and promptly remembering his concern on the rooftop when she was having her panic attack. Right.

"I'm _fine_ ," she reiterates again, removing his hand from her forehead before stepping back and heading for the door. "Besides, we're missing the meeting."

“Right,” he mumbles to himself, moving to follow her, holding the door open for her. “I guess it would look weird if we were in here alone for too much longer.”

Sometimes, he just doesn’t know why words are allowed to come out of his mouth.

Because two seconds later, Maggie's eyes go wide, turning to face him as she stops dead in her tracks. "Wait-- you're not saying--"

His eyes widen, too. He’d honestly been hoping that she hadn’t heard that.

“I’m...not...saying anything,” he says slowly, shaking his head just a little bit. “Nope. Nothing.”

Maggie might as well not have heard him, looking horrified as she lowers her voice to a deathly whisper.

"-- that they're going to think we orchestrated all of this just so we could have sex in the bathroom?!"

Jim shakes his head, his hand moving to the small of her back to push her gently out the door.

“No, no. They won’t think that. We weren’t gone nearly long enough for that.”

"Oh, like you could last that long," she scowls at him, starting off walking again, faster than his hand had been urging, if only out of a constant, desperate need to somehow always one-up him. "So what _were_ you going to say they'd think we were be doing?"

“I...was going to say that you threw up and I checked on you?” He keeps up the pace, staying next to her as they get closer to the door. “Did you want to lie?”

She stops them again, turning him to face her. "Nnnnonono _no_ , you said that it would look weird if we were in there together for much longer. _Why_?"

“I--” He stops, slowly shaking his head. “Because...it’s weird when one person flees from a meeting and another follows and they’re gone for a long time? I mean, it’s unusual.”

"Because they'll think we're fucking," she nods matter-of-factly, staring up at him.

“...not...necessarily...” Jim slowly shakes his head, his cheeks tinging pink a little bit as he glances toward the conference room.

"Why? Am I not fuckable enough to you now? Because I'll have you know, _Don_ happens to think--"

“Okay! It seems like you’re feeling better,” Jim says quickly, a hand on her elbow urging her toward the conference room as he quickly walks that direction.

"I told you that before already, and now you're avoiding the question." She stops him again, the flat of her palm pressing into his front as she stares back at him, every possible accusation in the English language seeming to flash in her eyes. "What, you think I can't handle being turned down by you just because you don't happen to find me worthy enough of sticking your dick into?"

“I didn’t say that!” But his cheeks go even redder, the edges of his ears burning as he looks around to see if anyone heard her. “And this isn’t exactly a work-appropriate conversation, Maggie.”

He never thought that it would come to _this_ when he went to check on her in the bathroom.

Not that Maggie seems to care much, her eyebrows furrowing as she crosses her arms in front of her chest, almost as though being told that this isn't the appropriate forum for this only serves to infuriate her more.

"Well then, please enlighten me to what you were trying to say."

“That we’ve been gone too long from the meeting!” he says, gesturing to the glass conference room where a few people look up at him, watching them. “There were no other implications there, and I would never dream of saying you’re not fuckable.”

With that, he walks off toward the conference room, slipping into his seat even as his ears burn bright red.

"Stop! Jim-- _Jim_! Get back here!"

Stomping after him, she glares daggers at him as she takes her seat once more, possibly more pissed than even before, only with more spectators around to watch them now as she leans over the desk a bit closer to whisper, Neal shooting them both confused looks as he continues on with his speech.

"Then _what_ would you dream of saying, exactly?!"

Jim’s eyes widen as he turns his head slowly to look at her, like she’s crazy. Everyone else is listening intently to Neal as he talks very seriously about Julian Assange, and they couldn’t be more obvious.

“Nothing!” he whispers back sharply.

"Fine! Tell me after the meeting!" she snaps back before promptly changing her mind and turning down to the notepad in front of her, hastily scribbling to him.

_I SAID, what would you dream of saying????_

He can’t believe it when she shoves the note in front of him. He is actually _trying_ to pay attention and do his job and she seems so fixated on this.

He scrawls a note back, missing Don’s look at them as he passes it over to her, hoping this will be the last of it.

_Nothing. Because we’re at work._

Huffing in disbelief, she throws him another glare, but doesn't write back despite nevertheless mouthing _fine_ at him from over the table.

It's not until after the meeting that she pulls him aside, her hand wrapped firmly around his upper arm to steer him away from anyone else that might actually need to talk to him for legitimate reasons.

"Okay, you said your piece. Now, where can we go where you'll be satisfied that this isn't an _unprofessional_ conversation? The roof? A drink after work? What?"

In a way, she knows it's stupid to get fixated on something so childish, but when Maggie gets into something, she commits. Completely. Even when she knows she's already lost the damn argument in the first place. Like going to hide under the damn bed.

Jim pries his arm out of her grip, sitting down at his desk to start his work. He can’t believe they’re still talking about this, that she _still_ hasn’t given it up. He doesn’t want to talk about this with her, because these kinds of conversations with her just end up making his chest hurt.

“Either of those would work, but it would still be an _unwilling_ conversation on my part,” he sighs, opening up the emails he missed during the meeting. “Why do you even care? You have _Don_.”

"B _ecaaauuu_ se..."

She started so strong.

"... it's about me, and I'd like to know. Besides, the last time I checked, I had to do things I didn't want to do under protest, too, so I guess this is payback and you'll just have to deal."

Jim watches her intently as she starts and he’s just about to give up when she actually finishes her statement and he has to smile, shaking his head as he looks down at his pen in his hands.

“No, see...that was _your job_. Talking about this any more, which I will say _again_ didn’t mean anything, is the opposite of my job,” he explains, gesturing the differences out with his pen and his hands, pointing on either side of an invisible line.

"Okay, but it's your obligation as a friend. Of mine. Which I do consider you. And it would be heartless and cruel for you to deny me this information," she nods fervently, looking at him from where her hands are balanced on his desk, her eyebrows raised to the heavens as she waits expectantly for some kind of answers.

He raises his eyebrows as well, mimicking her expression as he blinks at her. It’s his...obligation...as her friend? He has had a good number of friendships in his life, even if he’s never been in love, and none of them have ever come with conditions like this.

“Cruel and heartless? Really?” He sighs, slowly licking his lips. “It’s not important, Maggie. I really didn’t mean anything by it. I don’t even know what I was saying. I was just...worried about you.”

He’s always doing this, it seems. He’s always shoving things aside and dismissing them, just to make it seem less like he’s in love with her, or whatever this is he’s feeling.

Maggie stares at him for a long damn time. Pressing her lips together, furrowing up her whole face, relaxing again, looking away, before doing it all over again, seeming to try desperately to make up her mind about something.

And then she does, pushing off of his desk, her face still contorted into a terse frown as she glares up at nothing for a moment before crossing her arms in front of her chest to glare at him, starting to slowly walk back from him, this conversation, whatever _this_ even is between them.

"Okay, well, fine, then. Just-- the next time you decide to worry about me, don't. Because then we end up having conversations like this and--"

Shaking her head, she hastily turns around, speeding up on her way back to her desk, if possible, seeming more irritated than she even was before.

Jim watches her go, his eyes following her all the way back to her desk. For about the millionth time, he wishes that she weren’t with Don.

 

&

 

Jim keeps an eye on Maggie for the next few weeks, but she doesn’t bolt from any more meetings. She starts skipping her morning chai latte and bagel, which he notices but no one else does. And occasionally, he does see her looking a little pale. It’s not often enough that anyone else, including Don, notices.

He looks at her every now and then, his eyes staying locked on her face for just a little too long as he tries to figure her out. But after their last conversation about her health, he’s a little afraid to mention it, lest it devolve into her blaming him for not wanting to have sex with her.

Which especially bothers him because it’s so inaccurate.

Tonight, though, Lisa is over again, a movie playing in the background as her hands move over his front, tugging his tie off and undoing the buttons. He’s trying to be completely into what she’s doing, but he can’t seem to stop himself as he turns her around and flips her hair over her shoulder, his hands pulling her zipper down as the question seems to fall from his lips.

“Hey, is Maggie okay?”

For a full two seconds, Lisa stops, and he can see her blinking in confusion in his dresser mirror.

“...what?”

“M-Maggie... is she...okay?” he asks again, a little unsure.

“I don’t know. Yeah. She’s fine,” Lisa says with a shrug, wriggling out of her dress and turning around to reach for Jim’s pants. “Why?”

“No reason,” he mutters as Lisa starts kissing his neck. “She was just sick a couple of weeks ago.”

“Well, you’d be more likely to catch it than I would,” she laughs softly, wrapping her hand around his cock and starting to stroke him. “She’s barely home lately, always working or spending the night at Don’s. You see her every day, basically.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, shifting his hips up into her touch as he finally bends his head down to kiss her back. The mention of Don seems to do the trick, reminding him of why Lisa is here instead of someone else, and he wraps his arms around her waist, his hands sliding down to grab her ass.

He’ll worry about Maggie later.

 

&

 

There are designated times for panic where Maggie decides that white-knighting would be appropriate for the occasion.

Like now, when she's ten days late on her period, has been throwing up every morning for a few weeks-- usually right after having half of her coffee, in the _women's_ bathroom at the Starbucks just outside work so Jim doesn't ask any intrusive questions about _are you sure you're all right_ and _if you need anything..._ \-- and feeling moodier than ever, a situation not much helped by how bloated she's been feeling.

The chances of her being pregnant are, in fact, so alarmingly high up there that she actually goes out of her way to _lie_ to Don about her period's arrival, turning down sex for about six or so days if only for the fact that she knows he's smart enough to figure it out if he's been paying the least bit of attention.

Still, when she goes out and actually buys the damn test, she takes the subway out to a different drugstore from her usual, waits for Lisa to be out before she pulls the plastic bag back out of the cupboard she hid it in, and then paces her apartment for ten or so minutes prior to actually opening any of it and unpacking one of the tests with a terse frown to the _fertility test_ they so thoughtfully decided to include in their buy-three-get-one-free marketing pitch.

And when she actually goes to sit down on the bathroom to pee on a damn stick, she takes the time to lay out a xanax on the counter, _just in case_ , her heart already pounding in her ears.

If the first one doesn't say she's pregnant, well, she's got two more to take after this.

Fifteen minutes later, the xanax has disappeared from her counter, and Jim's phone rings.

 

&

 

Jim rushes into the bar twenty-five minutes later, even running for part of the trip, having missed his train just barely and pacing the station while he waited for another. Immediately spotting Maggie at the bar, he sighs gratefully that her glass is still full and that she hasn’t had time to get drunk yet. He still doesn’t know what’s wrong.

“Maggie?” he asks, sitting on a stool as his eyes land on a mostly empty glass to her left.

Shit. Clearly that drink isn’t her first.

But even just one drink in, Maggie looks like she was hit with a dump truck, her xanax hitting her full force even as the slight amount of alcohol that she's had is only doing its very best job to intensify the buzzy, numb feeling going through her extremities. The room is spinning. She might be a lightweight, but this is bad even for her, and she lets out a hiccup as she slowly raises herself up from the bar, only opening her eyes at the sight of him. She might look like death, but that is really the least of their concerns right now.

"I'm... _pregnant_."

She intones each syllable on its own, painfully slowly, as though the truth of the words hasn't quite sunk in enough yet, or she'd be on her fourth drink by now. Jim just...stops. He freezes, his eyes wide as his body seems to have momentarily forgotten to blink.

His mind is completely blank before what she said sinks in after a long while and then suddenly a rush of thoughts hits him like a tidal wave. She’s pregnant. With a baby. With _Don’s_ baby. And she’s here, looking like shit, telling _him_.

“You’re... _what_?” he asks slowly, needing to hear it again to believe it.

" _Pregnant_ ," she repeats again, a hiccup closely following right after before she holds up a finger to look through her purse only to find it not on her lap but on the floor. Stumbling a bit, she clambers off the barstool and nearly falls over, but finally reemerges triumphant on the one hand, still looking like shit on the other as she slaps the bag down on the counter and sits back down to pull out a pregnancy test to slam down in front of him.

Then another.

And another.

"I'm so pregnant it's like _every sperm in the world_ tried to swim up into my uterus to set up camp and for whatever reason, I decided this was a good deal _against my will_ ," she growls, glaring at him like this is his fault, like it's his sperm instead of Don's that put her in this position.

Jim tries to catch her when she stumbles off her stool, but she’s in a rather hostile mood at the moment, so he just decides to watch her carefully, hovering in case she needs the help.

She keeps saying _pregnant_ and every time he hears it, his stomach does an odd sort of flip. For more than a year, he’s been hoping that she and Don will realize that they’re not right for each other, that she’ll see _him_ finally, and it hasn’t happened. Now she’s pregnant with Don’s baby.

He looks down at the tests, frowning but thankful that all the caps seem to be firmly on the end of each one. They’re definitely positive, if he’s reading them correctly.

“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t... _every_ sperm...” he says, his eyes looking down at her stomach, still pretty wide and disbelieving. He would know, since it definitely wasn’t his sperm.

"I peed on three sticks, Jim! Three! Do you have _any_ idea how much pee that took?!"

She's clearly not thinking about what she's saying, but she's out of her mind wasted, and the seemingly only solution to that is that she should have more to drink, picking up her glass to start chugging the second one.

“N-no...” he says slowly, actually taking a moment to think about it. But in that split second, she’s reaching for the other glass, and he jolts back into action.

“Hey, shouldn’t you...you know, not be drinking right now?” he asks, gently prying the glass out of her hands to hold away from her. He gestures generally to her torso. “I mean-- since you’re--”

" _What_?"

She shoots him a look as if to ask if he's actually out of his mind, incredulously shaking her head at him. "It's not like I'm _keeping_ it-- what are you, my mother?!"

He’s not sure that she’s actually sure of that decision since she probably only found out about this an hour ago, but regardless of that, she’s already wasted, so he slides the drink away from her, resisting the urge to take a gulp of it himself.

“No, I’m your _friend_ ,” he says firmly, helping her back up onto her stool. “And you need to talk to Don.”

"I'm not telling Don anything!" she shrieks loudly enough to alert the bartender and a few people around them as she stares at him, eyes wide. "Are you kidding?! He'll want to keep it! No-- no, I need your help to get rid of it! We're getting to a clinic, and we're going to bring my... m-my bloody bits back that I get every month! I want them back, Jim!"

She makes a face, pressing her lips together as she shakes her head at the counter in front of her, frantic enough to warrant another xanax from the look on her face. "I'm... not ready to have a _baby_ , let alone with _Don_!"

Jim keeps calm through her rant and her mention of her _bloody bits_ , taking her hands as she starts freaking out again.

“You don’t know what he’ll want to do, and you’ve...been together for a while. He’ll want to know, at least. He’ll want to...be there for you,” he explains before softly adding, “I know I would.”

But a part of him knows that reasoning with someone who is both drunk and emotional is probably not going to work out.

"Nnnnonono, that's why _you_ are going to be there for me," she shakes her head matter-of-factly, giving him a poignant glare as her hand lands on his knee. "Don mentioned babies just the other month and I'm not trusting him to help me make this decision. If he wants to keep it, I'll have to consult with him on this, which I don't want to do, and if he doesn't, then having talked to him will have been completely useless."

Stumbling off her barstool again, she moves forward to take Jim's face between both of her hands, leaning in close to him if only to make her point clearer somehow.

"Don _can't_ find out about this. I don't. Want. Don's. Baby. So I need you to be the supportive friend that you are and _help me_."

It makes a certain amount of sense, but he can’t shake the feeling that this is all wrong somehow. He’s slowly shaking his head when her hand moves from his knee to his cheek and he looks into her eyes for the first real time since he got here. They’re glassy from the alcohol and, he suspects, some crying, but even in the dim light of the bar, he can see every fleck of brown and green and hazel.

He sighs, slowly nodding as he takes her hands down from his face.

“Are you _sure_? If you’re sure, and you’re sure you want me to help, of course I will,” he tells her slowly, patiently.

"I'm _so_ sure," she slowly intones, nodding to add additional emphasis as she takes a deep breath. "I've never been more sure of anything.... other than that I really would like that drink back." Turning back to the bar, she makes a grab for it, lifting it up to her lips.

“Uh-uh,” he says, taking it back from her and keeping it out of her reach. “You’ve had more than enough tonight. I don’t want to have to carry you home.”

He will, but he’d like to not have to do that.

She scoffs and rolls her eyes, but doesn't argue with him any further as she sits back down again, almost falling and hitting her head in the process as she stumbles back onto her chair as she clutches onto her head with a groan.

"Oh god, if all pregnant women feel like this I never want kids..."

Jim frowns as he watches her, his hand coming up to her back to rub her shoulders a little bit.

“I’m not sure that’s the pregnancy, but rather the fact that you consumed twice the amount of alcohol that you usually do,” he says slowly, eyeing her empty glass. “Besides, as I understand it, it gets better the farther along things progress.”

"I... don't feel so good," she frowns, scowling at his lap as she feels herself belch a bit. "And I would know, because I've been throwing up a _lot_."

“Oh boy.” Jim throws down a twenty just in case she didn’t pay for her second drink, and if she did it’s a generous tip for the bartender who had to deal with her before he got there.

“I’m going to get you home, okay?” he tells her, grabbing her purse and putting a steadying arm around her waist as he starts walking them to the door.

They're just about to step outside when the first wave of overwhelming nausea hits her, her throat constricting and bringing up whatever's still left in her stomach from lunch. She manages to hold it in for just about two steps until they're barely outside the bar before promptly spilling her guts out all over the ground and Jim's shoes all at once, still more or less hanging from his side as she clings to him.

"O-oh... god..."

He’d really been hoping that she wouldn’t throw up, but it’s not the end of the world when it happens, Jim cringing as he feels vomit hit his shoes. He has just barely enough time to grab her hair and hold it back for her.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs, holding her upright as he puts a hand on her back. Some people are staring at them, but he couldn’t care less as he looks down at Maggie to make sure she’s okay. “Does that...feel better?” God, he hopes it does, shaking his shoes off as he steers them toward the curb to hail a cab.

"N-no..." she shakes her head, leaning into him heavily as she feels herself hurl again, barely managing to keep it down. "'m tired..."

All in all, this is a bad combination. Not only has she had far more to drink than would get her drunk even in normal circumstances, but with the xanax on top of that, it's two depressants all at once, her head feeling swimmy as she leans into him a bit more.

“Okay...” He sighs, holding her a little tighter as he hails a cab. “Just hang on a little longer, okay? I’m gonna get you home...”

He can't help but be a little concerned over how she's reaction. She hasn't had that much to drink, after all, and he frowns down at her. “Maggie? Did you have anything else to drink before I got there?” he asks, trying to wake her up a little bit by shaking her slightly.

"N-no..." she slurs, burrowing her face in the crook of his arm, feeling herself more or less fall asleep even while standing there. "Just... w-water with my xanax that you told me to take..."

“Oh god,” he mumbles as he opens the door for her and gets her inside. “You probably shouldn’t drink after you take one next time...”

"Mm," she mutters softly, not quite making it into her seat but letting her body drape against his instead before just collapsing, seemingly folding in on herself.

He barely has time to get in his seat before her head lands softly in his lap. He stops to look at her for a moment before he adjusts her head a bit, settling back against the seat. Aside from the little bit of vomit on the side of her mouth, she looks kind of peaceful.

The cab driver asks him where they’re going, and Jim doesn’t even blink as he replies with his address.

It takes some time to get her up the stairs and into the apartment, but he makes sure she’s comfortably settled in his bed, her shoes off, before he stretches out in the chair in the corner to make sure he’s there if she needs her in the middle of the night.

 

&

 

Jim is, of course, just as always, the most supportive and amazing friend that she could have ever asked for, even going so far as to put her back together after her rather terrible drug/alcohol reaction, and finally she sets her appointment date for a clinic just outside the city for two weeks later. She can't say she's too worried being less than even two months along, but still, having that done and behind her will be a damn relief.

The only problem remaining is Don-- whether it's avoiding him, doing her best to keep Jim from spilling on anything, and generally keeping her mouth shut about his unborn child.

Which is why having all of this escalate even further seemed the least likely outcome-- but here she is, in the middle of the newsroom, having a discussion about a _puppy_

"No-- _no_ , absolutely not, we-- as a couple-- are not ready for that kind of commitment yet! That's-- that's insane, next you'll tell me that you want us to have kids soon! Which is even more insane!"

She can't help but feel more than a little bit insane in all of this, too, poignantly staring back at him as if to _will him_ into knowing about her pregnancy, that she's not ready for something like this with him now or possibly ever.

"A year ago you said you were ready for me to meet your parents and now we're not even ready to get a _pet_ together? I'm not talking about babies here, Maggie, I'm talking about a _dog_ ," Don frowns, putting his hand on her arm as he shakes his head. "What's going on with you, it's like you're going backwards."

"A dog is a huge responsibility!"

The entire newsroom can hear Maggie, and Jim looks at the scene as he walks by her to his desk with a fresh cup of coffee. He knows that when she’s saying dog, she’s thinking baby, and he frowns, thinking again that she should tell Don.

But that’s not his place. He’s _her_ friend.

He’s almost to his desk, he’s almost avoided the whole thing, when Don’s hand shoots out and grabs his arm.

“Hold on,” he tells Maggie, shaking his head. “Let’s ask Jim.”

“Let’s _not_ ask Jim!” Maggie says urgently, as Jim wonders why he always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Y-yeah...let’s not,” Jim echoes, nonetheless stopping while Don claps a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah, let’s ask Jim,” Don says, sounding more and more sure of himself. “Jim, I want to get a dog with Maggie. She sleeps at my place six nights a week anyway, so any dog that I get would be more _our_ dog than just mine. There’s a beagle at the shelter and I love beagles, and Maggie can’t think of a good reason not to adopt him. What do you think? Is almost a year and a half really _too soon_ for a pet?”

Jim purses his lips, shaking his head slowly.

“I think... that it’s... a thing between you guys, and... I mean, if she doesn’t want a dog...”

“Oh _come on_ , Maggie,” Don says, throwing his hands up.

"I just don't think we're ready for that kind of commitment! We're not even living together officially, so even if I am spending a given number of nights a week over there, there's nothing to say that we might not get into a huge fight over who gets to keep the dog if we end up breaking up-- I say, if you want the dog, you should get the dog, you don't need my permission for that, but then it's not my dog, too! Then it's your dog!"

She throws Jim a pleading glance, as if willing him to understand where she's coming from on all of this.

To be honest, Jim has kind of lost track of what the real issue is here, although he knows it’s more than just a dog for Maggie.

“I-I mean if one person makes a decision...it’s going to affect the other, too,” he says slowly, giving Maggie a look.

Don misses that, though, still looking at Maggie like she just kicked him.

“Why don’t you want a dog with me, Maggie?” he asks softly. “I-I mean, why are you so _sure_ that this is going to fail?”

"I--"

That look on his face makes her feel like she just punched a dying kitten or a starving child in Somalia, and she wavers for a moment as she shakes her head, throwing a glare back in Jim's direction. _She_ certainly didn't miss his implication.

"I'm not saying that this is going to automatically fail, I just... th-think this is too big of a commitment right now-- which, _for the record_ ," she snaps, turning to glare at Jim, "I don't think he should have to consult with me if he decided against getting a dog, as that isn't a _joint_ decision!"

"Am I... missing something?" Don frowns, looking from one to the other.

“Nope. I was just on my way back to my desk,” Jim shrugs, pursing his lips before taking a sip of his coffee.

Don looks between him and Maggie, not entirely convinced that they’re telling him everything he needs to know.

“Well, I _would_ \-- _am_ , actually-- talk to you before deciding to get one or not get one. Because this is a relationship, Maggie. I-I mean more than a year into it, and a _dog_ is too much of a commitment?”

Jim frowns slightly as he looks at Maggie, wishing she would just tell Don.

“Sometimes people can surprise you by how accepting and supportive they are,” he says seriously, aiming the comment at Maggie as Don looks at him like he’s crazy, because she’s not really being either right now.

"Shut! up!" she snaps at Jim before turning back to Don with a deep breath. "I'm going to think about the dog. Just..." Another deep breath. "You're going to have to just trust me on this one. _Please_."

Don gives her one last long look, before glancing at Jim, his jaw clenched as he turns away. “Fine.”

More or less alone with Maggie, Jim sighs, shaking his head as he turns around to finally go to his desk.

 

&

 

After Sloan finishes her segment, she walks into her office, opening her suit jacket and stretching a little as she reads the notecards in her hand, not even noticing Don sitting in one of her chairs.

“Hey,” he says quietly, balancing his chin on his hands.

“Holy shit! How long have you been there?” she asks, her eyes wide as she looks behind her into the hall.

“About thirteen minutes.”

Sloan blinks at him, her mouth opening a little bit, searching for anything but the obvious question. “...why?”

Don shrugs, looking down at his hands. He’s being decidedly un-Don-like, but Sloan suspects that she sees a side of him most other people don’t. She doesn’t know why she suspects that, because she barely notices all the complicated relationships in this office, Kenzie and Will’s alone being enough to give her a migraine.

“Okay...” she says slowly, sitting down at her desk. “Don’t you have prep to be doing for your show?”

“Yeah, I just needed to--” Don sighs, clenching his jaw. He closes his eyes for a moment, seeming to make a decision and just say what he wants to say. “Something is going on with Maggie. I don’t know what, but-- I think it has to do with Jim.”

...Oh. She probably should have been expecting that from his conversation with her a few weeks ago.

“A-are you... sure? I mean, I haven’t really noticed--”

“You _wouldn’t_ notice,” he corrects her, sighing again.

She falls silent at that, sliding back into her chair. He’s right, but if he knows that, then why is he here?

“Probably not, no,” she admits quietly.

They’re both quiet for a long time, but it’s not uncomfortable. She likes silence, quiet, stillness. Her and numbers go with silence just fine. It’s familiar for her. That’s probably part of why, even with her love of economics, she doesn’t want to be a stockbroker. But Don is a newsman, and he chases stories like an adrenaline junkie, so she’s not sure why _he’s_ so comfortable here in front of her.

He looks down at his watch finally, knowing he needs to get to the control room to start prepping for ten o’clock.

“She’s just... acting strange. If she mentions something, if I _did_ something--”

Sloan nods, her heart stuttering a little as she looks at him. His heart is in the right place, but she can’t help but wonder if he just doesn’t know when to call it, if he’d be the kind of person to ask for a hit on a twenty in blackjack.

“I’ll let you know,” she promises, giving him a small smile as he heads for the door.

She’s different. Numbers and logic are things she’s intimately familiar with. For every action, there is a predictable effect. She likes to think that if she were him, she would know to get out of it. But, then she remembers the wedding that never happened, and she knows that it’s not always as clear as that.

 

&

 

Drunk and high on xanax, this seemed like the easiest prospect in the world.

Now she's not so sure anymore, and the only damn thing that's keeping her headed for the Planned Parenthood clinic on Bleecker is Jim's hand in hers, Maggie's lip bleeding from the sheer amount of chewing on it that she's been doing, her feet tap-dancing nervously on the ground before her as the sit in the waiting room.

"I can do this," she reminds herself for about the two-hundredth time that day, her stomach doing somersaults.

It's not exactly that running headfirst out of the clinic would have her headed straight to a Babies"R"Us instead-- it's more so that this is scary and new and something she never thought she'd ever have to do. She's been on birth control for years and antibiotics never made those fail before, but then she has one bad, persistent cold, and suddenly she's pregnant.

The thought alone of carrying a baby to term to give it up for adoption is mortifying if only because she doesn't want to get attached and-- even more so-- doesn't want Don to know what she's doing, so for once, a woman's right to choose is more important to her than anything, affecting her more intimately than ever before.

Keeping it is just as much out of the question. She might have been drunk when she said it, but that doesn't make it any less true. She doesn't want a baby right now, isn't ready for a baby right now, and doesn't want one with Don. Where a year ago she would have jumped for joy at the chance for them to get a puppy together, to practically be living together, now... she's moving backwards. He's right, of course, and she hates that, almost as much as she just plain doesn't know where the intimacy went, the need to get persistently closer to him.

Somewhere along the lines far beyond her understanding, they switched roles, Don suddenly the one chasing after her as she turns him down. The one saying she isn't ready to have a dog together, to meet his parents, to _have his freaking baby_.

So what's wrong with her?

Still worrying her bottom lip, she casts a glance over at Jim just as she hears her name called, swallowing hard before nodding. It's time. In a way, she wishes he could come in with her, but that alone would be even more ridiculous than the fact that she's here with him instead of Don in the first place, her heart aching as she leaves her things with him and heads for the nurse, throwing Jim one last grateful smile.

"You're awesome," he says softly after her with a small smile and a nod, and suddenly she's not so nervous anymore.

 

&

 

The procedure and the recovery period last longer than he thought. All the magazines are Cosmo and Allure and things he generally has no interest in, so he’s left to turn to Maggie’s purse for entertainment. He listens to her iPod, finds one piece of gum amongst a sea of wrappers, and mentally catalogs everything else. There’s a message from Don on her phone, and it’s clear that he’s not happy about her avoiding him.

But once Maggie is out, all his attention is on her. He gets her back to his place, stopping along the way to get her the necessary supplies, and points her in the direction of the bathroom with one of his t-shirts and a pair of sleeping pants that will be way too big on her. But she smiles at him and says she doesn’t mind, so he just gives her hand one last squeeze and goes to the kitchen to start her tea.

An hour later, she’s curled up with a heating pad on his sofa, drinking the tea he made her, and he’s on the phone ordering them take-out.

“One order each of beef and broccoli, cashew chicken and orange chicken...two orders of those little fried things with the cream cheese...yeah, and extra rice.” He pauses, listening. “Egg drop...I’ll pay cash, thanks. Okay.” He hangs up with a sigh, rolling up his sleeves as he sits next to her on the sofa. “Forty minutes. How are you feeling?”

"... fine," she shrugs, still overwhelmingly grateful for everything he's done. He's been waiting on her pretty much hand and foot, something she's not used to, but nevertheless something she decides she certainly could get used to if she and Jim were dating.

Which they're not, and she should stop thinking about it so much.

The attendant at the clinic told her that she might feel relief, maybe a bit of sadness, nothing too bad in the long-term, still going out of their way to offer her counseling just in case she needed it.

And somehow, the only thing she takes out of all of this-- other than a miserable amount of abdominal cramps, excessive bleeding, and the light painkillers she's now on-- is that Jim would make a great boyfriend, catching a glance of him now and then as she looks about his apartment.

Of course she went through his medicine cabinet, looked through his whole bathroom and tried to sneak a glance at his bedroom. Nothing telling or concrete, no pictures of him and any past girlfriends, let alone Lisa, no open box of condoms sitting around like he's trying to project the image of a sleaze.

It's disgusting how put-together he seems, how neat his apartment looks even now, having seen it the first time back when he brought her back to his place after she vomited on his shoes and passed out in his lap.

In a way, it's strange that since then, it's only been a couple of weeks, that all of this is already done and taken care of, and that all she has left is a follow-up visit and some rest.

"You've been... really great through all this, you know that?" She frowns down into her tea, holding the heating pad a bit closer to her abdomen as she bites back a wince.

Jim looks over at her sympathetically, putting his hand on her shoulder as he settles back next to her. Throughout all of this, he can’t help but think about what if this _was_ him and her and _them_ doing this. He thinks about how he’d want someone to treat his girlfriend or his sister, if she were going through this, and he tries to do that, being as attentive as possible.

“It’s nothing,” he says, smiling at her before ducking his head a little. “Really.”

The smile she returns is small but warm and genuine all the same, and she sighs, finally dragging her gaze away from that ridiculously adorable one mirroring hers on his face.

"So, um... seeing as I'm confined to your couch and we haven't got any daylight hours left, what do you say we... watch a movie?"

He holds her gaze for as long as she lets him before nodding and clearing his throat.

“Yeah. Um, that sounds pretty good.” He gets off the sofa and moves to crouch next to his dvds. “What do you think you’re in the mood for? Comedy? Drama? Classic?”

"Weeeell, seeing as I just had my uterus vacuumed out, I'm going to have to call that a _no_ on anything that'll make me tense or overemotional. So... classic?"

He raises his eyebrows when she gets graphic, especially since he’d been trying to avoid thinking about things in detail like that.

“Ooookay,” he says slowly, rummaging around for a few choices. “Some Like it Hot, Bringing Up Baby, or Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”

"I didn't know you had Some Like it Hot-- yeah, let's watch that," she nods, scooting over on the couch a bit to make room for him to move in behind her.

“Okay, deal.” He smiles as he loads it in and comes back over to sit with her. He kicks his shoes off and brings his feet up onto the ottoman, draping his arm over her shoulders to let her lean against his chest.

This all feels too comfortable to be appropriate, but with Maggie here, he doesn’t really care, the way she's snuggling easily into the crook of his arm with a soft sigh as she gets herself settled and ready to watch. He has to be getting hot under that blanket, but it doesn't seem to matter much right now, not to either of them, and the two hour runtime passes just as comfortably as everything else has been so far, with them only getting interrupted by the food being delivered, Jim getting up and arranging the containers in a way that Maggie wouldn’t have to bend to reach anything. By the end of the movie, they’ve moved even closer to each other, as if being together like this is the most natural thing in the world, Maggie turning to look up at him once the movie comes to a close.

She's just barely too close for comfort, just barely close enough to kiss, and she bites her lip, her words getting stuck in her throat for a long moment as she just looks at him, seemingly searching for the right thing to say and how to say it.

Jim swallows thickly as he looks at her for a long moment before shaking his head.

They’re only cuddling like this because of the abortion that she didn’t want to tell her boyfriend about. She still _has a boyfriend._

“Um...” He clears his throat, moving away from her a little bit. “You can take my bed, obviously.”

It’s only about ten thirty, but he assumes she’s probably tired from all the shit she went through and then the painkillers.

"I'm not--" But then she changes her mind, sighing as she stares down at her feet under the blanket with a frown. "Don't... you've already done enough. The last thing I need to do is steal your bed from you, too."

“You’re not...stealing. I’m _giving_.” He smiles at her a little bit as he starts to clear up the takeout containers. “Seriously, Maggie. Don’t worry about it. You deserve a bed.”

"What, and you don't? Just-- join me," she shrugs, not thinking about what she's implying. "It's a queen, don't be such a baby. I won't rape you in your sleep, especially not given that I'm more or less functionally crippled right now."

Nodding to the heating pad, she scowls, throwing him another shrug.

He throws her a look at that, rolling his eyes.

“I’m not really worried about you _raping_ me,” he tells her.

The larger concern is that this day and what he’s doing for her already blurs some lines between them, far surpassing what is appropriate for colleagues or even friends. Sharing a bed has the potential, her physical state notwithstanding, to be a sticky situation.

"Well," she starts with a shrug, moving to stand alongside her heating pad, "I'm not too worried about _you_ raping _me_ , either."

Sighing, she rolls her eyes, gesturing to his bedroom. "It's a queen size bed. What's the worst that can happen?"

He gives her another look at her comment about him raping her, and sighs.

“I don’t know. Accidental cuddling or groping?” He shrugs, taking her arm to start guiding her over to the bedroom.

"We've been _accidentally cuddling_ for the past two hours, grow up," she shakes her head, plugging her heating pad back in and disappearing off into the bathroom to get ready for bed, still talking with him through the door. "It's not a big deal, I'm sure it'll be fine. And it'll sure as hell beat you sleeping out on the couch because of me."

Jim sighs, realizing that she’s not going to let him get out of this. And he’s supposed to be helping her stay relaxed, so it’s kind of his job to sleep in the bed with her. While she’s in the bathroom, he changes into a pair of sweats and a shirt and sets out a glass of water on her side of the bed.

She comes out and he gives her a tight smile, just a little nervous but trying not to show it.

“You better not hog the covers,” he tells her, laughing softly.

"I wouldn't _dream of it_."

 

&

 

Maggie’s been avoiding him for weeks, he doesn’t know why, and quite frankly, he’s almost stopped trying to guess. He’s apologized for anything and everything he can think of, and he’s just... _tired_ of trying to guess.

He’s tired of everything, and it’s starting to show in his work, Elliot taking him aside after the broadcast to ask if he’s okay. He shrugs it off, says he’s just been having trouble sleeping, but he’s honestly wondering why he can’t move past this.

So what if Maggie doesn’t want to talk to him? So what if he’s only wasted more than a year with her only to have her freeze up and pull back? So what if she looks happier with Jim than she ever has with him?

He gets his stuff together and sighs, starting out the door to go home, alone, again. On the way out he passes Sloan’s office, and he’s surprised to see her light on. Stopping in the doorway, he knocks softly on the glass with a smile.

“Hey.”

Sloan looks up from her laptop, pushing her glasses up a little bit as her eyes find his and she smiles.

“Hey,” she says, leaning back in her chair from where she’d been hunched over her laptop.

“You’re still working?” he asks with a grin, coming into her office and sitting down like he was invited.

“Oh,” she sighs, closing the laptop. “It’s... kind of depressing, but... I didn’t have anything better to do. I was going to just go home, you know, but. I figured I would be up for a while so I might as well catch up on some stuff.”

Don slowly nods as he looks at her, pursing his lips. Finally, he smiles at her, laughing softly. “You’re right, that is depressing.”

She smiles, too, and he can’t help but stare a little as she runs her hand through her hair with a breathy, soft laugh.

“Yeah, I know.”

It only takes a second for him to decide, thinking of Maggie and how she probably left with Jim while he was working, without saying goodbye.

“Come out with me. Let’s get a drink,” he says, an easy grin on his lips as he leans forward on his knees.

Sloan stops, blinking a little like she didn’t expect that from him.

“Um...” She closes her laptop, clearing her throat. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he responds encouragingly. “Why not?”

She looks like she’s actually thinking about it for a moment, searching for a reason to decline. But the way his chest warms a little when she comes up empty is nothing short of disgusting. He can’t remember the last time he was this genuinely happy and excited, which will hit him later.

“Okay, fine,” she says with a small smile, packing up her stuff.

“Outstanding! That’s the kind of enthusiasm I love to hear.” He winks at her as he stands up, slinging his messenger bag over one shoulder as she shrugs on her jacket and grabs her bag.

They don’t go to the usual bar, instead going a little farther uptown to someplace a little nicer, grabbing a small booth in the corner and placing their orders.

She surprises him by ordering an Old Fashioned and he throws her a grin as he orders his own scotch and soda. By the time the drinks arrive, they’ve settled in and they’re talking, laughing, catching up.

“Yeah, you know if I’d had to be stuck on that plane, I would have rather had you next to me than Elliot,” Don says two-thirds of the way through his second drink.

“Oh, please,” Sloan laughs. “You love him. He’s probably your best friend.”

“Eh,” he shrugs, the truth of her statement really hitting him more than he shows. “That still doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t have been more fun.”

“I am _not_ fun,” Sloan corrects him. “Why do you think I’m single?”

She means it as a joke as she drains her glass, but he actually stops to look at her blinking as he smiles a little bit.

“I don’t know.”

“What?” she laughs.

“I don’t know why you’re single,” he repeats. “You’re smart, you’re beautiful, you’re fun to talk to, you make me fucking grin like an idiot--”

He seems to realize what he’s saying, looking into her eyes for a long moment as she beams back, her hand moving to his arm.

“That’s so sweet,” she coos, sliding closer to him on the curved booth seat.

He shrugs like it’s no big deal, their shoulders suddenly touching, leaving Don to wonder how they got this close.

“I’m just being honest,” he says quietly.

She looks up at him, smiling softly as she bites the edge of her lip, her hazel eyes sparkling a little in the dim, warm light. It would be easy for him to lean in and kiss her, to just forget that he actually has a girlfriend, no matter how distant she might be right now.

But... he can’t. As much as he is a dick and a prick and an asshole, he’s not a liar or a cheater, and he doesn’t plan on becoming one any time soon. It takes more self-control than he’d like to admit to slide away from her and suggest that maybe they’ve both had enough, that they’re sufficiently relaxed. But he does it and at the end of the night, he assures himself that he doesn’t have anything to feel guilty for, especially not with how much time Maggie seems to spend with Jim.

Sloan is a friend. He can have a friend without feeling like he’s doing something wrong against a girlfriend that doesn’t even want to be around him.

 

&

 

It's been a quiet evening in, just the two of them, both of them in bed on their laptops with the news on in the background, just as usual. It's nice-- especially after two or so weeks of avoiding Don and doing her best to ignore the occasional stabbing pains in her abdomen, she realizes that she really actually did miss this, just... being with him.

He's just back from the bathroom when he stops, taking a good, long look at her. She just barely misses the look on his face, but when she glances up from her screen to catch the tail end of it, she smiles, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

"What? What is it?"

"... since when did you go to college at the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill?"

There's a very long, pregnant pause between them as Maggie stops and casts a slow glance down to her shirt, peeling the fabric from her skin just enough to see the writing.

It's Jim's shirt, the same one he offered to her the weekend she spent the night with him, and for a second, her mind just blanks as she blinks up at Don, her mouth open, closing, opening again.

"I, uh-- this is Jim's shirt."

That those are the actual first words out of her mouth is just as believable as it is ridiculous, and she bites her lip as she glances down at her shirt again, slowly starting to shake her head as the cogs seem to turn in Don's head and he leans back against the wall, arms crossed in front of his chest.

"Now-- why would you have Jim's shirt, Maggie?"

"I... we went out after work this one night, and I ended up accidentally throwing up on myself, so he brought me back and I kind of... never gave it back to him," she laughs a bit awkwardly, biting her lip as she offers Don the best smile she can possibly manage.

The way he starts to slowly nod his head, knowing fully well when Maggie is lying, sends her into more of a panic as she sits up a bit, shaking her head again.

"I swear, I have it for a good reason, it's-- it's nothing weird, nothing weird is going on between the two of us!"

"Uh-huh, yeah," he softly mutters, grabbing a pair of jeans before disappearing out the bedroom to leave Maggie scrambling to get off the bed, accidentally tangling herself up in her laptop cord as she stumbles on her way out.

"Don-- Don, no, listen to me!"

She barely manages to stop him as he's standing in the door of the apartment with a terse frown, staring at her for a long moment. "Just-- sit tight, I might not be back all that early tonight. Depends on how many drinks I have and what girl's shirt I end up in by the end of it."

He's back by three, still wearing his own shirt, Maggie pretending to be asleep on her side of his bed.

 

&

 

"Okay," Maggie starts, coming to a stop at Jim's desk as she presses her lips together a bit nervously. It's never a good start to any conversation with her, when she has to go into a lengthy diatribe about how none of this is her fault although it kind of sort of actually really might be her fault after all, but she's doing her best to keep it together, staring at one of the notepad collections on his desk before finally turning her head to look at him.

"Okay," she tries again, slowly nodding. "So, um, you're going to tell me that this was really stupid on my part, and it... _prrrobably_ really was, and I probably should have thought this through better, _but_ \-- I think Don suspects that something's going on between us and it's quite potentially possibly really bad because I... m-might have really messed up on something kind of seemingly trivial, but-- well, Don's smart, so... it kind of wasn't really all that trivial after all and I need your help figuring out how to get out of this one."

Taking in a sharp breath, she winces a bit as she shoots him an apologetic, pleading look, doing her best to pull off the adorable puppy dog eyes that work so well on Don.

Jim blinks at her for a moment, the eyes not seeming to do one bit of good on him.

“What did you do?” he asks flatly.

Feeling her appeal seemingly come up and die all in one fell swoop, she takes in another deep breath, letting it out in a bit of a whimper as she flexes her hands, seeming rather intent on gesturing significant internal conflict.

"I, uh... might have... worn... your shirt..."

"My shirt?"

"Yeeep, that's the one," she nods, swallowing hard and looking anywhere but at Jim, "... to bed. And now he thinks that we're fucking and that I don't have any foresight at all, which we both know only one of those two is correct and I _know_ I should have thought before mindlessly wearing that shirt but I _wasn't_ thinking... and now I don't know what to do."

Jim nods as she wraps up her story, summing up the pickle she’s caught herself in. He’s still not saying anything, really, least of all something helpful.

“Well, I could tell him that we’re not fucking, but I doubt that would help,” he says finally.

"Didn't do much good when _I_ said it, so no, I don't... think so," Maggie retorts, scowling deeply as she shakes her head with a sigh.

“So, it looks like the only option you have left is to _tell him the truth_ ,” he says, his words complete with a hard, reproachful edge.

"I can't tell him the truth, are you nuts?! Are you telling me that you seriously do not have _any_ better solutions than this one, oh, Mr. Shoulder Angel, my conscience, my conscience, what would I have _ever_ done without you?" she scoffs, poignantly staring back at him like he's lost his mind.

Jim stares right back at her, shaking his head.

“You should have told him the truth from the beginning and now he’s catching on that you’ve been hiding something.” He sighs, getting up from his desk and dragging her by the elbow out to the terrace. “Maggie, I’m your friend, and I’m glad I was able to be there for you when you needed someone, but if you want to save your relationship with Don, you’re going to have to be honest with him.”

"So you don't want him thinking that we're fucking. Why? Any reason in particular?"

It's a ridiculous question. It hardly even has anything to do with their conversation. Still, Maggie stares at him, waiting patiently for some kind of answer. The fact that she wants to know in the first place should be telling, but she's doing her best to push down and ignore the voice in her head reminding her of Jim's words to her, just now, when she _knows_ he's right.

His eyes widen and he gestures to her generally, as if to ask if she’s _hearing_ the words coming out of her mouth.

“What the fuck are you saying? Is that _really_ preferable to the truth?”

"I don't know!" she snaps back, gesturing back at him just as wildly with her arms. "That's why I'm asking you, because I _assumed_ \-- and apparently incorrectly, so please, tell me if I'm wrong-- that you'd want to have a voice in whether or not we may or may not be doing it!"

“We’re _not_!” he fires back immediately, biting his tongue to keep from adding that if she’s going to tell him that, he should at least have the opportunity to be guilty of it.

"That's-- _obviously_ not the point!"

“Okay, fine, then tell me what the point actually _is_ , because it seems like you came to me for advice and then when I gave it you acted like it was a ludicrous suggestion, so.” He raises his eyebrows, waiting for her to enlighten him.

She's about to have a very female moment, she knows, pressing her lips together as she stares at him for a long stretch. They come on with small harbingers, the way she's more aware of certain things, like the smell of his t-shirt even after wearing it for four days straight still being the one she's catching in the air now just by standing near him, the way he looks at her sometimes like he might just have to kiss her or else he'll die.

Blinking once, twice, she slowly shakes her head at him, deciding not to fight it as she throws her arms up and starts walking backwards.

"Just... forget it. Forget I said anything. It's obviously my problem and not yours, so... it never happened."

Turning around, she opens the door to head back inside with a long sigh, wondering just how much more they just fueled the gossip mill around the office just by being out on the terrace together for this long, regardless of what they were actually doing.

 

&

 

Don never expected Maggie to be the one to fuck up their relationship, but when it happens, he feels an odd sort of freedom come over him. He’s been fighting to get closer to her, to move past this standstill they’ve been trapped in for the past year, and nothing has worked.

Now, because she’s cheating with Jim, he’s free. He’s absolved of that responsibility to her. He doesn’t have to keep trying because she clearly doesn’t give a shit.

It’s not that he ever had any intention of doing anything, it’s not like he was waiting for this to happen. He would have much preferred for Maggie to be with him and for them to be happy and get a dog.

Maybe if he hadn’t pushed her on that, she wouldn’t have done what she did. But even as he thinks that, halfway through his second double bourbon, he knows that the problems between them started way before that. Maybe the problems have always been there.

It’s just when he thinks that, ignoring another text from Maggie, that he smells a familiar combination of lavender and grapefruit that he’s only ever noticed on one person. Looking around, his eyebrows raise slightly as he looks over his shoulder at Sloan settling into a booth behind him, her nose stuck in a book.

It’s no wonder that she’s single if this is how she spends her Saturday nights.

He orders an Old Fashioned and gets up from the bar, coming over to her table and sitting down, placing the drink in front of her.

She looks up, her eyes wide and surprised, looking at the drink first and then at him.

“Wha-- Oh, hey,” she stammers, smiling a little as she slides a finger into her book to mark her page.

“Hey,” Don smiles slowly, nodding at her book. “What are you reading?”

“Nothing,” she responds slowly, turning the book over as her cheeks go pink and she reaches for her drink, taking a sip.

It’s cute, and he laughs, reaching forward to take the book from her, their hands tangling a little bit as she tries to keep it on her side of the table.

“Come on,” he says, prying it away from her. “What are you so shy about?”

Sloan just presses her lips together as she waits for him to read the cover. When his soft chuckle reaches her ears, she raises her glass to her lips and takes a sip.

“The Wealth of Nations,” he says disbelievingly. “You have two PhDs in economics and you’re reading something that I think I read in the eleventh grade.”

“It’s a classic!” she all but shrieks, snatching the book out of his hands. “I reread it every so often. Give me a break.”

“Fine, fine,” he says, holding up a hand in surrender. “I guess I can understand that.”

Grinning softly, he slides the book back to her, his eyes holding her gaze intently. She seems to sense the shift, and she licks her lips, putting her hand on top of his on the book.

He slides around the booth, closer to her, with a sigh as he takes another sip of his drink. Sloan looks up at him and he can feel her eyes watching him, his fingers around the glass, his lips on the rim as the liquor slides across his tongue.

“So…what are you doing here?” she asks softly, rubbing the orange twist across the rim of her glass and then demurely licking the tips of her fingers.

Don shrugs a little bit, not really wanting to talk about things or even think about Maggie.

That’s not good enough for Sloan, and she asks again.

“Why aren’t you with Maggie tonight?” she asks, watching his face as he purses his lips. “Did something happen, or--?”

“Yeah, you could say that,” he blurts out before downing the rest of his drink. “I’m pretty sure she’s sleeping with Jim.”

There’s a distinct tone that he doesn’t really want to talk about it further or go into the gruesome details, but Sloan doesn’t seem to pick up on that.

“Oh my god,” she whispers, like she’s truly heartbroken for him. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s--” He shakes his head, muttering bitterly. “It’s whatever. It’s fine. It’s not like I wasted an entire year of my life on her. It’s not like I’m getting older every fucking day.”

Sloan blinks, swallowing hard as she puts her hand on his shoulder, squeezing softly.

“I’m sorry. I know-- I know how it feels to be cheated on,” she tells him softly as Don reaches over and takes her drink since his is empty. “My fiancé slept with his secretary the week of our wedding.”

He looks over at her then, his normally round eyes even wider.

“What?”

“…wh-what?” she asks slowly, like she can’t understand what was unclear about that.

“Someone was stupid enough to cheat on you?” he asks incredulously.

“It’s…not really important. I’m over it,” she insists in a way that makes him not really that sure that she is over it.

He takes a sip of her drink before passing it back to her, thinking she might want some of it, too, since they’re talking about this.

“I’m not over it. I’m not even remotely fucking over it,” he says bitterly, chuckling mirthlessly. “I can’t believe she would--” He breaks off, sighing as he looks down at the cocktail straw in his hands. “I should have been a better boyfriend. I shouldn’t have…pushed her. I’ve known for months that she wasn’t happy and I kept--”

Sloan shakes her head, putting her hand on his back, just over his shoulder blade as she moves closer to him. He can feel her pressed against his side and suddenly forgetting about Maggie seems like a very good idea. He’s done enough wallowing lately, enough drinking, enough yelling at people that don’t deserve it.

“Whatever you did doesn’t justify what _she_ did,” Sloan whispers fiercely, and he can see even more now than before that she’s really not over what happened to her.

“Maybe not,” Don mumbles, his eyes running over the curves of her face, studying her as he seems to try to connect her freckles like constellations.

If what he did doesn’t justify Maggie cheating, then what Maggie has been doing, having an affair, certainly justifies what he’s about to do. Don licks his lips, his eyes flicking up to Sloan’s hazel ones, and slowly leans in to kiss her. She’s surprised, but that barely lasts for a moment before her hand is in his hair and she’s kissing him back.

His hand finds her thigh under the table as she gasps, and he sighs, deepening the kiss. It’s been more than a year since he kissed anyone but Maggie, more than a year of doing everything right.

Fuck doing the right thing.

She lied, she cheated, she _hurt_ him, and he’s done.

The decision to leave and go to her place is about the easiest one he’s made in months. He doesn’t have to think when he’s with her like this, he doesn’t have to do anything but _feel_ … her weight in his lap in the cab, her lips on his jaw, her front pressed against his, his ass hitting the bookcase just inside her apartment as he kicks the door closed.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispers as he comes up for air, his hands tangling in her hair to take the clip out and let it flow down around her face.

She might be the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, and in that moment, he can’t think of a single reason why this isn’t a good idea. His hands slide down her back to slip underneath her t-shirt and grab onto her sides, pulling her closer as he presses his hips against hers.

Sloan bites her lip, her hands moving down from his jaw, over his throat, to the buttons on his shirt, starting to undo them with an incredible amount of focus. Don smiles, pushing her own shirt up over her stomach as she gets his open all the way and pushes it along with his jacket off his shoulders.

“God--” she whispers, touching his bare chest. “It’s been-- You don’t want to know how long it’s been,” she groans softly.

Don nods with a grin, pulling her shirt up over her head and immediately starting to work on her bra as he lets her push him toward her bedroom. It’s been a while for him, too, what with Maggie getting dick from other people.

“So fucking gorgeous,” he mutters into her neck, twirling at the edge of her bed to switch their positions and push her down onto the bed. Kicking off his shoes, Don bends down to keep kissing her, his lips moving with hers as he slides his tongue into her mouth.

Sloan whimpers sharply, her hands working on his belt, trying to get him out of his pants as fast as she can. She’d been wearing flats, and they slip off her feet as she slides up the bed, using her heels to push herself higher.

He groans against her as she drags him along, his hands landing on either side of her to support his weight as she shoves his pants and boxers down. Climbing up all the way, he moves over her before sitting back to shuck his pants off all the way, muttering a string of obscenities under his breath as Sloan watches with a slight grin.

“Trouble?” she purrs, kneeling next to him and popping the button on her own jeans before slowly rolling her hips as she slides the waistband down. The denim pools around her knees and Sloan moves back onto her ass, extending her legs toward Don.

“No,” he sighs, licking his lips as he grabs the fabric at her ankles to pull her pants off all the way. “No trouble.”

Once he throws her jeans over the edge of the bed, the only article of clothing on either of them is Sloan’s black thong and Don groans, his hands sliding up her legs to touch the waistband.

Maggie wears only the most practical underwear, and he can’t help but marvel at how different she is from Sloan in almost every single way, right down to their underwear.

Kissing her hipbone, he moves his lips across her stomach as he slides the scrap of lace lower and lower until she kicks it off and he grins against her tanned skin. His hand moves up to cup her breast, kneading greedily as he moves up her body to kiss her again, Sloan whimpering softly in response.

“Oh god--” she moans breathily, her hand closing around the leather cord of his necklace to keep him from moving away as her legs wrap around his waist.

He moves his hand down her body, his fingers dragging across her skin as he moves it from her breast to between her legs, his knee nudging her thighs apart a little wider. He easily finds her clit while she’s kissing his neck, her teeth sinking in with a gasp as he starts drawing circles against her.

“Fuck--!” he cries out, his hand moving faster, Sloans eyes shut tightly as her toes curl and dig into the bed beneath her.

“Don’t stop--” she whimpers, her hips bucking up off the bed against his hand as he adjusts it, sliding two fingers inside her, pumping them in and out, hard and fast. “Ah!”

That’s all it takes for her to come for the first time, and Don moves a little lower to take her nipple into his mouth while his hand keeps going, his thumb changing the rhythm on her clit as his fingers curl inside her. Sloan moans low in her throat, her hands grabbing his hair as he kisses and sucks on her breast.

“Oh god-- m-more--” she moans, panting harshly. “Come on-- _please_ \--”

Don is determined to make her come one more time, even as her body writhes beneath his, her chest and cheeks both flushed a deep red with arousal, his hand sopping wet from being inside her. He moves his fingers faster, rubbing her clit a little harder as he moans around her nipple.

That seems to do it, Sloan’s breathing stuttering as she lets out a keening whine from the back of her throat and she comes around his fingers a second time.

He barely gives her time to recover before he moves back up, kneeling above her to kiss her hard for a long moment, positioning himself at her entrance.

“Protection--?” he mumbles, more than a little distracted by the way her legs around his waist are urging him to get on with it already and _fuck her_.

“No need,” she whispers back, her hands moving to his cheeks before she kisses him hotly.

That’s all he needs to hear, and he slides inside her with a smooth, practiced roll of his hips, groaning as he feels her completely surround him, her pussy fluttering around his shaft. It’s perfect, it’s amazing, and he’s enthralled. He eagerly soaks up her moans, starting to thrust inside her, his biceps flexing as he moves, one hand inching toward her hair to thread his fingers through it.

Sloan moves her hips up off the bed with him, nodding encouragingly as her hands grasp as his shoulders, her short nails digging into the skin there.

She feels amazing, perfect, really, and he groans as he speeds up, trying to go deeper. This is exactly what he needs, to just fuck and not think about a single other thing for a while. He’s not thinking about Maggie or what he’s going to do after this, he’s just thinking about Sloan and how to make her feel as good as possible.

“F-fuck-- _harder_ \--” she moans harshly, her hand closing tightly around one side of his neck as she kisses and nips on the other.

Don adjusts his weight, thrusting harder and deeper, pounding into her as he closes his eyes against the feeling of her lips on the sensitive skin of his neck. He slides a hand between them, keeping up the new pace as he adds a finger to her clit, rubbing in time to his thrusts.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he gasps against her the shell of her ear. “Come for me.”

Sloan moans deeply, crying out sharply as she falls apart and he feels her suddenly clench around his cock. He can’t hold on after that, not when she feels so fucking perfect around him, and he thrusts into her once, twice more before coming hard with a groan.

“Ah-- f-fuck--!”

He does his best not to crush her, balancing his weight on his elbows as they both gasp and pant, trying to catch their respective breaths as their hearts pound in their chests.

Sloan slowly blinks, her eyelids fluttering a little before she opens them all the way to meet his gaze with a small smile.

“Oh,” she whispers, swallowing hard and licking her lips. “That--”

“Yeah,” Don agrees, clearing his throat as he pulls out of her and looks around him to find her a tissue.

Smiling a little wider, Sloan points to the nightstand closest to the window. “There.”

“Ah,” he mutters, grabbing a few to hand her some and clean himself off. “There you go.”

“Thanks,” she says, sitting up with a sigh to clean herself off, pushing her hair back with her free hand as she glances at him.

Catching the look as he grabs his boxers, Don’s stomach clenches up a little, wondering how wrong what they just did was.

Sloan gets out of the bed to throw the tissues away and she turns down one side of the bed to get under the covers. “Are you staying?”

He almost didn’t hear her between how loud his own thoughts are and the rustling of the duvet, but he looks up, his eyes finding hers in the dark room. Holding her gaze for a moment, he really thinks about it. He could stay here, with her, or he could go home to his own apartment, which is empty, and yet full of reminders of his failed relationship.

When he thinks about it like that, it’s not much of a decision.

He nods a little bit, climbing in next to her and settling back against the pillows with a sigh.

They don’t cuddle, just touching a little here and there along their sides. But Sloan looks at him for a long time, taking a deep breath every now and then like she wants to say something but can’t find the words. Eventually, she takes his hand in hers and holds it, squeezing once before rolling onto her side towards him to go to sleep.

 

&

 

When Don doesn't want to be found, he's like a cat, disappearing into every nook and cranny where she might not get to him-- or whomever else he happens to be trying to avoid at the time.

But it's been a week, at least fifteen phonecalls and just as many voicemails, a good twenty texts, and five unsuccessful housecalls with no answer, and Maggie, as resilient and persistent as she's been in trying to hunt him down and get a hold of him, has gotten nowhere.

Even trying to catch him at work or at the bar has proven fruitless, despite Neal's insistence that he saw-- and spoke to-- Don just earlier that day, implying that he hasn't died or mysteriously disappeared from the earth's surface without any warning.

It does make her feel a bit better about their non-existent morning conversation over coffee as they got ready for work the day after the fight that never happened, the fight they still haven't legitimately learned to have, when Don went out and got drunk because he caught her wearing Jim's shirt.

If he'd died, she would have felt bad for never saying anything, never explaining herself or reminding him that she really does love him, regardless of her omission of the truth.

But he's not dead, he's just avoiding her, and somehow that doesn't make her feel all that much better all in all, her heart heavy as she returns from another trip upstairs to try and catch him in his office.

"I can't find... Don. Anywhere," she finally huffs, coming to a stop beside Jim's desk, her hand curling around the top of one of his two laptop screens with a frown. "He won't return my calls, won't text me back, and it's like he's disappeared into thin air. I've been to his apartment more times than I can count, but either he's not home, or he's not answering the door, but if it's just the latter, then he's very good at this hiding thing because he normally keeps his light on in the evenings to avoid being bathed in total darkness. And he hasn't been at the bar. Have you seen him... at all? I need to talk to him about this t-shirt business."

Jim is quiet for a long moment, his thumb pressed against the corner of his mouth, his eyes unmoving from his computer screen. But he hasn't been reading, just listening, and finally he sighs, leaning back in his chair as he nods to Sloan's office door, playing with the pen in his hands.

"You should go talk to him," he reminds her again, and she sighs, rolling her eyes taking a deep breath and stepping back from his desk.

"I know, I don't need a lecture now."

 

&

 

It’s been a week of avoiding Maggie and avoiding talking about what they’re doing with Sloan. He told himself the morning after that it would only be the one time, but he was kidding himself. That night, and every night after, he found himself turning up at her apartment like a lost puppy. She brings it up, every now and then, that he should talk to Maggie and figure out what’s going on. She tells him that she doesn’t like lying, that she’s horrible at it, and he can’t hide from this forever.

But then he kisses her, whispering dirty things in her ear, and she’s successfully distracted.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, which is why he keeps hiding from Maggie and diverting Sloan’s attention every time she hints at figuring things out. He’s not even sure what he wants, but he’s starting to think that he should just let Maggie go so she can be happy.

He grabbed her for a special economic story for Elliot’s show and after a short meeting between the three of them, he walks back to her office with her, his hand on the small of her back as they slip inside, her door left open on accident.

“So?” Sloan leans against her desk with a small smile, looking up at him under her eyelashes. “Should I expect you to show up tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Don says slowly, moving to stand close to her, their knees brushing against each other as she reaches for his hand.

“You say that every night,” she reminds him with a grin.

“Mm.” He’s about to lean in and kiss her before he remembers where they are and he clears his throat, looking out at the hallway that overlooks the newsroom.

After a moment, Sloan breaks the silence, standing straighter and putting her hand on his shoulder. “You need to talk to her. I don’t like this, Don,” she reminds him in a low voice.

“I know, I know,” he assures her, one of his hands moving to her hip.

"Um," Maggie's voice cuts through their conversation, clearing her throat a bit as she stares at the two of them, how close they're standing, the way they're touching. She blinks once, twice, not quite able to take in the sight in front of her, wondering if she's _missed_ something along the line, if she woke up a week ago in an alternate universe. "Am I... interrupting something?"

“Jesus Christ,” Don mutters, moving away from Sloan as she blushes slightly, her eyes widening.

“No, no, no. No, _no_ ,” Sloan rushes to assure Maggie, coming around her desk, wringing her hands.

It’s not convincing in the least and Don gives her a look to tell her to relax, that this is his problem to handle, as he moves around her to usher Maggie out of the office.

“We should-- not talk about this here.”

"No, um, we _definitely_ should because you haven't spoken to me in a _week_ after I _kept_ trying to get in touch with you, and the next thing I know is that-- that--" She gestures wildly back at Sloan's door, her eyes widening a bit. "I don't even know what that was!"

“We’re going to talk, just not _here_ ,” he tells her firmly, his hand on her shoulder pushing her down the hallway to the stairs. He’s hoping to avoid talking about this at the office at all. “Come to my place tonight and we can talk there, in the meantime, get back to work.”

" _First of all_ ," she stops him dead in his tracks, putting her foot down as she glares up at him, " _don't_ tell me what to do. And _secondly_ , anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of everyone. Maybe if you'd _been there_ the last _week_ when I was desperately trying to get a hold of you, talking at your place would have been _fine_ , but it's not anymore!"

“Maggie, this _really_ isn’t the time or the place for this conversation!” He’s steered them off to the side, but they’re still drawing stares from every direction. In a room full of reporters, it’s a miracle no one is filming them or taking notes.

"What the hell is going on between you and Sloan?!" she snaps incredulously, her eyes wide as she looks at him in complete and utter disbelief. She doesn't care who's watching, doesn't particularly care who sees this. A week ago, she might have done this with poise and decorum, but now? Not as much.

“Nothing!” he roars back, forcing his eyes to stay on Maggie and not look around to see if Sloan is watching. “Nothing more than you’re doing with Jim, at least.”

"Jim and I haven't done _anything_!" she shouts, throwing her arms up. "There's _nothing_ going on between Jim and me! That's what you think, isn't it?!"

“Give me a fucking break, Maggie! I’m not an idiot,” he shoots back, his blood pressure skyrocketing. “You’ve been _fucking him_ for weeks, behind my back.”

"I _haven't_ been fucking Jim, and if you'd paid any attention _at all_ , then you'd have realized that I was _pregnant_ and didn't want you to know--" She stops yelling for a moment, stepping back to take a deep breath as she purses her lips together. It's like her own words have knocked the wind out of her, and she finally meets his gaze again. "Because I didn't want to keep it."

Don feels like he’s just been punched in the stomach by Lonny, his eyes widening as he takes a step back and looks at her. “You’re... _pregnant_?”

" _No_ , nononono. I _was_ pregnant. And Jim was the one that helped me through it. And I didn't-- I didn't _cheat_ on you like you apparently went and did on me."

He raises his eyebrows as what she said sinks in and he crosses his arms over his chest, his jaw setting as he takes a moment to just... absorb what she just told him.

“You _were_ pregnant. But you’re not anymore,” he repeats slowly. He takes a breath, his jaw working. “I’m assuming this was an elective situation that _Jim_ so thoughtfully helped you through? A _choice_?”

He’s ignoring the fact that he _did_ cheat on her, for the moment. Because this... is so much fucking bigger than that.

"I didn't have anyone else to go to?! Who would I have gone to, Don, to Sloan, like you apparently did? Jim and I are _friends_ and I needed someone there to help me through this, that's it!" Somehow the vitriol has creeped back into her voice, and she huffs, glaring at the wall beside her, quiet. "I just needed someone there."

Don throws his arms out, shaking his head in disbelief.

“ _I_ was there! _I_ would have helped you through it! Maggie, _I was the fucking father_ and you should have told me. You didn’t fucking give me a chance, because you _didn’t tell me_!” he booms, ignoring the people that have stopped to stare at them.

Maggie is speechless for a moment, just staring at him she presses her lips together, taking in deep breath after deep breath, fighting to gather her thoughts again. She had good reasons-- _good damn reasons_ for doing what she did, but right now she can't seem to think of any of them.

Swallowing hard, she shakes her head. "If-- I didn't-- I didn't mean-- I didn't want-- look, I know I made a mistake in not telling you, but I was... scared that you'd want me to keep it, and-- that's why I was freaking out about the dog and being so distant and-- and wearing Jim's shirt because he helped me through the abortion and I used his bathtub back at his place because I didn't want to deal with Lisa. But then I try to get back to where we were, and it's... apparently impossible because you decided to go off and cheat on me with Sloan without even bothering to check any of your facts."

Closing her eyes, she takes in another deep, controlled breath, as though he's trying her patience throughout all of this. "You're a goddamn _journalist_ , Don, and you didn't think to check your facts before you decided that apparently my wearing Jim's shirt was enough evidence for you. So the only thing I can take from that is that you _wanted_ me to be cheating on you so that you could go be with Sloan."

He doesn’t even know where to start, but he slowly walks toward her, backing her into the corner.

“Don’t blame this entirely on me. You didn’t give me a chance to support you, instead deciding to go ahead and judge me and think the worst. I would have been there for you, would have... taken you to the clinic, and--” He breaks off, swallowing hard. “The facts I had were that you were spending a lot of time with Jim, you two seemed close, you weren’t _speaking to me_ and, yeah, I caught you wearing one of his shirts. Was I _really_ supposed to deduce from all that that you had a secret abortion? You wouldn’t _tell me_ what was wrong, despite me asking you over and over again.”

"You could have trusted me! I asked you-- begged you, even-- to just _trust me_ , and evidently that was too much to ask of you! I told you I wasn't sleeping with Jim, I told you nothing funny was going on, and the next thing I know, you disappear for a week!"

She knows he's not the only one at fault for all this, but of the two of them, she's the only one that's even admitted that she fucked up, and she remembers, once again, how things work for them. How fights are always resolved, Maggie closing her eyes as she feels herself tear up, shaking her head.

"You know what? You're right. Fine. All of this was my fault. Even you sleeping with Sloan. So we'll just--" She swallows hard. "L-leave it at that, and I'll take all the blame again, just as usual, if that's what'll make you happy, Don."

Turning around, she heads straight for the door, not daring to look back at either Don, Jim, or Sloan even once.

Don looks after her, crossing his arms over his chest as he turns away, starting back up the stairs to his office. He passes Jim, and Sloan breaks off to follow him, Don heading in the opposite direction of Maggie. He’s not even remotely in the mood to solve this with her, if it’s even solvable, which he doesn’t think it is.

Jim watches it all happen, and by the end of it, he can’t really believe what he heard. He doesn’t give a shit about Don and Sloan, except for the fact that it hurt Maggie, and Maggie said--

He follows her out to the terrace, crossing his arms as he steps outside and stops behind her with a sigh.

“You used me for a bathtub?” he asks tensely.

If she's completely honest with herself, Maggie knew that the one two follow her out here would be Jim, not Don, that their relationship is finally over no matter how much she tries to take the blame for everything that has ever gone wrong in the entire time that they've been together, and she turns to look at him, blinking through a haze of tears.

From where she's standing, she's now fucked up not only her relationship with Don, but her relationship with Jim, too-- if there ever was one to fuck up in the first place.

"I didn't say that," she replies through the thick of her throat, wrapping her arms around herself a bit more snugly, the chill of the late autumn air biting at her through her light jacket.

“You...did, actually,” he corrects her quietly. “It all made sense, at the time, and I thought I was just being a good friend, but... now, I don’t know. I was _really_ just your last choice?”

"It's not-- it wasn't like that, Jim." Swallowing hard, she shakes her head, not wanting to quite look away, but not wanting to face him head on, either, her gaze uncomfortably settling on his chest.

“That’s what it sounded like,” he tells her, more sharply than he intended. “If he cheated on you, why are you begging him to take you back and throwing me under the bus when all I ever did was support you?”

"I didn't-- I mean, I wasn't-- I wasn't _begging_ him. I was... pointing out an inherent flaw in our relationship. Because this isn't all my fault. Maybe... a large chunk of it, but it's not _all_ fault for once, and he's supposed to be out here apologizing for being an asshole."

But it all comes out too quietly to hold any real command, and she sighs, shaking her head at herself with a sniff.

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you, Maggie.” In that moment, Jim decides to stop being gentle with her and start using tough love. “He’s not going to come out and apologize for being an asshole. He’s probably not going to even apologize for cheating on you. That’s because he doesn’t consider you an equal and he probably never will, so I think it’s safe to say that your flawed relationship is over.”

Maggie lets her teeth clamp down on the inside of her bottom lip as she looks away, anywhere but at him now, her chest aching a bit at the truth of it all. He's right, of course, and she knows as much.

"And... what, you see me like an equal?"

Her voice comes out so much quieter and meeker than she remembers ever hearing herself, taking in a stilted breath as she stares at the ground.

Jim swallows hard, looking down at the ground as he shuffles his feet a little bit.

“I used to. Back when I thought you felt the same way.” Now, he’s not so sure.

"What?"

That really jolts her, her gaze snapping up to meet his as her stomach constricts almost painfully. This doesn't make any sense-- not any of it, but here she is, hoping to god he didn't actually mean what he just said.

“You just spent ten minutes telling Don how _little_ I mean to you!” he blurts, gesturing back toward the office, looking very hurt.

"But-- no, no--" Swallowing hard, she shakes her head, running her hands into her hair as she bites back tears. "What was I supposed to say-- that we might have not been fucking for weeks, but we sure as hell wanted to be?!"

“That would have been an option! I don’t know, Maggie, is that true? Because, to be honest, I feel a little alone in all this,” he chuckles mirthlessly. “It’s always been me watching you with Don and you pretending not to notice. What am I supposed to think when you’ve never said _anything_ but how little I actually mean to you?”

She takes a moment just to look at him, watching him as she chews on her bottom lip. She's never been good at this-- admitting being wrong is one thing, but admitting feelings?

"You've never-- um." She clears her throat a bit awkwardly, staring at her feet for a long moment before she looks back up at him again. "You've never actually said anything."

He gives her a look, as if to ask if she’s kidding.

“I think I was pretty fucking obvious.”

"When I, uh... when I had a crush on Don, back before we first started dating, I... intentionally bumped into him about f-five or so times at this office party for all the staff and the interns in the hopes that he'd get the hint, and then I spilled my drink all over him-- again, intentional, by the way-- so that I could get him in the bathroom and clean him off and get kind of close... ish... to him." Licking her lips, she realizes a second too late that talking about her now-ex-boyfriend probably isn't the best way of going about this, looking a little sheepish for a moment.

"M-my _point_ is that... I'm... n-not... in any way... shape, or form... good at this. At all. I mean... if you're lucky, I might start spilling things on you in about a month, but it might be another year or so before I work up the courage to actually _say anything_. But if you're _really_ lucky, I might barf on you a few more times before that actually happens." She shoots him a weak smile when she finishes stumbling through her words, laughing softly as she offers him a bit of a shrug.

Jim stares at her for a long moment, barely blinking, barely breathing, before he takes a couple of steps back and drops down onto the bench against the wall. He’s never had an ideal image of a girl he’d like to end up with, he just knew how he wanted her to make him feel. With recent events excluded, Maggie has always made him feel like that. She’s made him grin like an idiot and she’s challenged him in unexpected ways.

“I can’t go a year without talking to you,” he admits softly. “I just can’t.”

"... I'm not sure we could go a day without talking to each other," she shrugs, shaking her head as she moves to sit beside him, tucking her arms between her thighs for some warmth as she looks over at him. "And, um. I think you might have just passed up the perfect moment that you were supposed to kiss me."

He smiles at her weakly, putting his arm around her shoulders to pull her closer to his side.

“You’re not good at this, remember?” he reminds her, his eyes sparking a little as he leans his forehead against her temple and kisses her cheek.

She can't help it, smiling back at him as she leans into his touch, closing her eyes with a soft laugh.

"Does that mean I have to entrust the relationship responsibilities to you, Captain?"

Jim smiles a little wider, nodding as he squeezes her tighter.

“Yes. And we’re going to have some ground rules,” he starts slowly. “First, you’re going to be honest with me, always. I don’t care what you think I’m going to think about anything. You have to tell me everything.”

"No, um. No abortions behind Jim's back. Got it. Although," she takes a sharp breath, closing her eyes for a moment before turning to look at him properly. "I-I mean, ideally I'd just avoid antibiotics from now on, but. I, uh. I don't know that I could. H-have done the same thing. If it had been with you." Her voice goes quiet as she swallows hard, blinking at him for a long moment.

His heart clenches in his chest and he sighs. “If you had decided that was the right decision, I would have been there for you just the same as I was. Okay?”

He can try to pretend like her saying that doesn’t mean anything, but that’s not true. It means everything.

“Second,” he says, clearing his throat. “We’re going to start really slow. I’m going to take you on dates for a while, while you still live with Lisa. You’re not just going to jump from one serious thing to another, because I really don’t want things to-- You were with Don for more than a year, so we’re going to go slow.”

"Okay. I can... I can do that, too. That's... probably a really good idea, in fact." Licking her lips, she holds his gaze for a long moment. "Does this put a cap on how soon we can have sex, too, or... is that... not... part of this?"

He glances at her sideways, smiling a little crookedly.

“Not... exactly. But we probably should wait until we get off work, at least,” he says slowly. Truthfully, he’s thinking a few days to let all this settle might not be the worst thing in the world.

But he’s not done with the rules yet.

“Third,” he says, squeezing Maggie to get her to focus. “You need to officially end things with Don. You can’t just avoid him and pretend like the last year never happened. You have to end the relationship, get your shit back from his apartment, everything. Closure.”

"Okay, so... that's no sex on top of your desk... at least not until after hours, and... you might have just totally shut down the exact plan I had for handling this situation, so that's... uh, that's a major disappointment, but... I think I can handle this newfound adult responsibility thing." She throws him a weak smile, slowly nodding before going back to serious for a moment. "Yeah, I'll talk to Don."

He knew exactly how she was planning to handle this, which is why he made it a whole separate rule.

“Good,” he says, nodding. “That’s all the rules I have for now, but they’re big ones. So I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed. You don’t have to talk to him now, but...very soon. Within the next few days.”

"I'll talk to him. Lord knows he'll probably want to get closure, too, before he and Sloan officially do their thing," she slowly nods, swallowing hard. "It's good, though. That it happened this way. That way neither of us is left really feeling burned because we chose someone else over the other and left the other stranded."

Jim nods along. That makes a certain amount of sense.

“Good,” he says, looking over at her face, carefully studying her. “And you’re...okay?”

"Yeah," she finally looks up at him again, smiling faintly through a soft chuckle. "I'm... surprisingly okay, actually. I guess... practicing breaking up so many times kind of did the trick."

“Well, but you haven’t broken up in a while,” he sighs, kissing her cheek again.

"But... this time it's definitely for good," she nods, biting her lip as she leans into him, letting her head come to rest on his shoulder as she looks out over the terrace, her arm around the small of his back pulling him a bit closer. "Definitely for good."

 

&

>   
>    
>  **Epilogue**  
>    
> 

Jim takes her out on their first date the next day after work, and it's perfect. Wanting to avoid an awkward run-in with Lisa, they meet outside where he greets her with flowers that he realizes too late she can't put into water, leaving them to decorate someone's windowsill as they walk the short distance to the surprise restaurant of his choice. He kisses her for the first time that night, in front of the door, and though Maggie invites him upstairs, he turns her down, saying it'll happen sooner than later.

It's a month later that marks both Don and Sloan moving in together and adopting a puppy, Maggie feeling very much like she somehow missed a train she was meant to get on three weeks ago when Jim said it'd happen sooner than later.

He's the perfect boyfriend, and it's not like she has much to complain about with him. Her life seems perfect to the outside observer, and even relations between her and Don improved faster than she ever could have hoped, as though they were always meant to just be friends instead of lovers. When Sloan-- a bit awkwardly-- suggests they go out for drinks sometime, just the two of them, it all seems to click into place, Maggie surprising herself when the smile she puts on her face alongside her _yes_ isn't fake but entirely genuine.

The only last remaining obstacle is sex.

Which is precisely why Maggie is still at ACN at 10:30 on a chilly early November evening wearing nothing but some lacy black lingerie and a coat that goes to just over her knees for lack of anything longer-- an outfit that got her more than one look from Neal _after_ she realized that he was still in the office alongside the two of them..

The precarious heels she's in are just as deliberate as the rest of her outfit, and she curses herself for about the tenth time that night for going into one of the many professions that had the potential of keeping her boyfriend-- though she's not _entirely_ sure about that title, seeing as all they do is about as tame as what Nancy Drew and Ned Nickerson do together in Carolyn Keene's literature-- still at work an hour and a half to midnight.

At one month together, she would have expected he wouldn't end up working late, but then again, she also didn't expect to date James Harper for a full month before he decided she was fuckable enough.

It's 10:45 when she finally gets up, slapping her hands onto her knees and making her way over to his desk, leaning back against it and crossing her arms in front of her chest.

"Are you _ever_ going to realize that I'm just sitting there, waiting for you to finish whatever important task you're doing past ten on a Monday night?"

Looking up at her, his eyes a little wide, Jim frowns. “We’re working.”

More accurately, _he’s_ working, and she’s watching him. But he hasn’t seemed to notice that.

" _No_ ," she tries, inclining her head a bit as she gives him the most meaningful look she can possibly muster. "I've been trying to be patient while you spent our one month anniversary working late."

There's a long, pregnant pause as she presses her lips together, staring at the floor as she contemplates telling him the next nugget of information. "I'm also wearing nothing but underwear under this coat."

It took some maneuvering-- getting lingerie into her handbag as discreetly as she could possibly manage without letting everyone else in the office see, and consequently-- having to later on stuff all of her clothes (and far more comfortable underwear) into her purse at the end of the day after changing in a public bathroom stall. But it was _worth it_.

Or, it might be worth it-- that is, if Jim decides to start meeting her halfway on this and stops being such a damn good employee.

His eyes widen further and he looks down at her torso, as if staring at the buttons of her coat would make them pop open. He looks over his shoulder at Neal, who is wearing headphones as he types, clearly not paying attention to them.

“It’s not our one month anniversary,” is all he says before patting her leg just above her knee and turning back to his work.

"Nnnno..." she intones slowly, cocking her head at him. She can't believe he'd just ignore her, reaching down to grab his shoulders and gently push him back, making his chair roll back a few feet. "No, it _is_ ," and I can prove it to you. Here."

Grabbing his small calendar off of the corkboard next to one of his screens as the pin goes flying, she flips back and points rapidly at October. "This is the day that was a week after my abortion and... this is the day that we started dating. The day that Don and I broke up. And I don't know if you were _listening_ or not," she sets down the calendar on his keyboard, something he clearly doesn't need right now, "but I'm still not wearing any clothes under this coat."

The pen is still in Jim’s hand as she forcibly pushes him away from his work. He nods thoughtfully, listening to her as she reasons it out and points to the calendar. He looks up at her earnestly, blinking down at her coat and it almost looks like he’s going to suddenly see what she’s saying and agree with her.

Then...

“It’s not our one month anniversary,” he repeats, picking the calendar up off of the keyboard again. Patiently pointing with his pen, he centers on the date she was jabbing moments ago. “That was two weeks after your abortion, when you and Don broke up.”

He looks up at her to make sure she’s following him, his pen moving to the _next_ day.

“ _This_ is when we had our first date,” he tells her slowly.

"Okay, yes," she continues very slowly, as though talking to a small child, "but _this_ ," she jabs her forefinger into the calendar again, "is the day that we _started dating_. The night we agreed to start dating out on the terrace. Which makes today one month and you're wasting time we could be fucking on your desk."

He gives her a small smile, reaching out to gently move her hand back to his date.

“No. _This_ is when we started dating,” he repeats. “I know, because I would never want my anniversary with the girl that I love to be the same date as when she broke up with someone in a very public and kind of brutal way. Which is _also_ why I’m still working, so that we’ll be able to leave early tomorrow night for our date.”

He clicks his pen, sliding back to his computer.

“And I’m not fucking you on my desk because Neal is eight feet away.”

"Okay, see... I _was_ going to open up my coat to try and shut you up and convince me to take you on your desk because Neal left two minutes ago, which I know because I'm facing in that direction, but--" she clears her throat for a moment, blinking at him, "then you said you love me and... see, the last time I checked, that was... news to me."

Turning to look over his shoulder to make sure that Neal is, in fact, gone, Jim leans back in his chair, biting his lip as he smiles at her.

“Is it really?” he asks like a smartass. “Well, I am in the news business...”

It's funny, because it took Don five and a half months to say those words and one and a half years to consider living with her when he started after just two weeks with Sloan, and she looks at her smartass of a boyfriend for a moment as though it's never been a question in her mind, as though this just makes sense like some great universal truth, wondering if maybe that's why Don and her never worked out.

Because they weren't a universal truth.

"Well, um, maybe you should alert your inner news man that his girlfriend might feel the same way," she clears her throat a bit sheepishly as she stares down at her outfit. "And that she's still dressed like this for his enjoyment in the hopes that he might, um. Get on with it already."

He looks at her for a long moment, like she’s the most adorable person he’s ever seen. It’s entirely possible that she is. Leaning forward in his chair, he takes her arms down from where they’re wrapped around her and gently takes one side of her coat, peeking inside.

“...wow.” He nods, replacing her coat to cover her back up. “That’s...definitely enjoyable. Don’t you think that the first time we do that should...maybe be at my apartment?”

"One, um. One _might_ think that, but, see, that would require an invitation upstairs that I have yet to get as your girlfriend," she clears her throat, giving him a look to imply that this is definitely entirely his fault and none of hers.

“You’ve been in my apartment before,” he says, standing up and putting papers in various inboxes. They’ve been up there several times, making out but always stopping just short of the bedroom, so he’s confused why she would be looking at him like that. “Even as my girlfriend.”

"Okay, _yes_ , again, but there's a big difference between going to hang out with you in your apartment as your girlfriend and _getting invited upstairs_ for something like _coffee_ after a successful date that everyone knows is actually a keyword for _dick_."

He stops to look at her, as if to ask if he seems like the kind of guy to invite someone up for dick.

“Well... like I said, I had planned a special night for us tomorrow,” he says, ducking his head a little as his cheeks turn a little pink.

She almost feels a little bad, biting her lip as she looks at him for a long moment, leaning in a bit. "And-- and we can _still_ have that special night, but right now I'm wearing _really_ little and-- other than going through a lot of trouble for this today, I'd feel like an idiot if I had to go home and take it all off without you being there to... you know. Do the taking off."

He sets everything down and leans over his computer again. He doesn’t say anything, and for a moment it looks like he’s ignoring her, but then the computer starts shutting down and Jim slings his bag over his shoulder.

“You look really pretty tonight, Maggie. Would you like to come back to my apartment for some coffee?” he asks, quirking a small smile and holding out his hand to her.

It's not until his words really register with her that she realizes he's not shutting her down and making her wait until tomorrow because of their date mix-up, and a slow smile blossoms on Maggie's face as she takes his hand. "I think that could be arranged, Captain."


End file.
